Tag Archives: script

I’m sure you’ve written dozens perhaps hundreds. For each, you’ve painstakingly chosen every word, and gone over it with a fine-tooth comb. It’s a work of art. Therefore, come time to perform this masterpiece you’re shocked when it doesn’t go off as planned. What happened? Your witness happened.

Witness scripts or outlines are a staple of any litigator’s trial playbook, as they should be for a variety of reasons. However, there are several critical mistakes or shortcuts that are often made that invite disaster on the witness stand, the biggest of which is that the attorney did not consider the witness’s particularities. Simply talking with your witness is not sufficient to uncover those particularities; instead, the best way to assess them is through a mock direct examination. Here are three critical aspects of communication that you can glean from the mock examination and then address through the construction and editing of your witness examination script. Continue reading →